1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing method for a lens-fitted photo film unit, and a printer for the printing method, wherein a test frame is photographed on a filmstrip to control printing conditions of other pictures with reference to image conditions of the test frame after development.
2. Background Arts
It is known in the art that photo films in general have more or less different coloring characteristics even between those having the same film speed, according to the film manufacturer, the environments on manufacture and so forth. Besides, coloring densities of photo films vary depending upon development conditions. Therefore, in order to get adequate quality of prints from any photo films, it is necessary to compensate for the variations in the coloring characteristics. As one method for this purpose, a test frame or check pattern is optically recorded on the film at a photo-lab before the development, and correction values are derived from three color densities of the test frame measured after the development. The correction values are used for correcting three color exposure values on printing.
Such test frames have conventionally been used only for correcting the variation in the coloring densities of the film.
On the other hand, most of lens-fitted photo film units preloaded with a photo film cartridge and inexpensive cameras use a single element lens as a taking lens to cut their production cost. Because of aberrations of the single element taking lens, pictures taken by the lens-fitted photo film units are apt to have geographical distortions, obscured contour in peripheral areas, tonal distortions, density unevenness and the like.